Xenoarchaeology [mirrorcult, Approved]

Central thesis here is to retool R&D around xenoarchaeology and artifact reseasrch.

Artifacts have a lot going for them and they genuinely bring out the 'research' part in research & development, owing to their RNG triggers and effects. The goal here is to make researching them more involved, rewarding, and fun.

Artifacts can either be structures or held items, and they have randomized sprites, with no set effects that can be determined from any obvious data.

The intention with artifacts here is to abuse ECS heavily to create emergence.

Multi-Node Artifacts

Simpler artifacts will have a single effect and trigger. However, more complicated artifacts will be multi-node–meaning they can be in multiple states at any given time and switch state according to some rules.

Each random state of an artifact is called a node and each node can have edges to other nodes. Each node has its own trigger and effect, and the rarity of the effect and danger of the trigger scales with how 'deep' the node is from the starting node.

The goal here is to really make dealing with artifacts feel like mad experimentation. You have to untangle the web of nodes and properly discern whether you've reached every node or not, all while having to solve each individual node's triggers and effects and minimizing damage caused by them. Xenoarchaeologists are incentivized to seek help from others who can provide resources to solve individual nodes, or people that can help mitigate the damage (medical, engineering).

Xenoarchaeologists are supplied with paper and pen on which to record the nodes they discover for each artifact (true mad science feelings), as well as a supplemental machine (see Artifact Analyzer) to aid them.

More 'completed' artifacts (more nodes reached and more effects triggered) are inherently more valuable to the xenoarchaeologist, as their effects can be harnessed, but they can also be sold at Cargo for more money (see Artifact Economy)

Artifact Analyzer

The standalone (not hand-held) artifact analyzer will serve as a supplement to artifact researchers rather than being required or making everything too easy.

The artifact analyzer will give you a basic readout of the current state of an artifact node, after a delay of one minute and a large power draw. This readout includes possible triggers and effects for the node, how deep the node is, and how many edges the node has to other nodes, if any.

Artifact Economy

As mentioned, more fully completed artifacts are worth more to sell at Cargo.

There will be multiple sources of artifacts. The most obvious and useful one is salvage. If salvage is unavailable (or just dead), then artifacts can be acquired through some random events (like the bluespace anomaly?), and they can be purchased through the galactic market (not recquisitions, see cargo design rework issue). If the asteroid belt/space ruin idea is ever acted upon then artifacts could also be found there.

This introduces the tradeoff of 'keeping the artifact to harness its effects' vs. 'selling artifacts to use to buy rarer artifacts' which I think is interesting

Utility Artifact Effects

Most artifact effects are instantaneous things like electrocution, spawning mobs & items, etc. However, a new class of artifact effects will reveolve around adding components permanently to the artifact once triggered, essentially 'unlocking' the true power of the artifact.

For item artifacts, this will involve things like receiving the components for becoming:

• edible & randomizing its solutions
• a random tool with random speed
• a randomized gun
• a random organ type (maybe even multiple)
• any number of small items–mousetraps, fire extinguishers, forensic pads, etc

For structure artifacts this will be things like receiving the components for becoming:

• permanently electrified with a large power draw
• a random computer
• a random modular mine with payload
• a randomly-colored permanent point light